


5 Times John saved a Packmate & 1 Time his mate saved him

by AraSigyrn



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-26
Updated: 2010-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-12 09:27:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraSigyrn/pseuds/AraSigyrn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally posted for the anon-meme on LJ  for the prompt<br/>"<em>Were!John is a social animal, and thus strongly protective and caring of what he perceives as his 'pack'. His darling mate, Sherlock, is a given. But who else would be part of Watson's pack? Mrs. Hudson? Lestrade? Mycroft?</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
Ironically, it was the British Empire during its expansion era of the nineteenth century who introduced therianthropy to Afghanistan. The historical record, complicated by the old stigma still associated with therianthropes in many countries led to many people hiding the disease, suggests that the Napoleonic Wars represented the peak of the modern infection with the massed armies creating a hotbed for infection to spread. The result was the largest therianthrope population explosion since the time of Mongols

By the time Victoria took the throne, there was a concentrated effort to eradicate the 'Lunar Disease' which was mostly effective and by the dawn of the new millennium, the infection rate in the UK is officially listed at 1.9%, most of them herbivore types who have always fared better during the periodic witch-hunts. Mandatory vaccinations are still in place but concentrated research into the virus is still lacking.

When the Afghan war erupts, the common wisdom is that the very worst that could happen is that there might be a handful of troops who the vaccination failed to protect. The therianthropy virus has been stable in the United Kingdom for five generations, after all.

Doctor John Watson is one of the first to discover that just because the virus, safely established in a relatively closed ecosystem, hasn't mutated is no reason to assume that it _can't_. He is one of the unlucky ones, or lucky, depending on your point of view and his first change is harrowing but he's comfortable as a wolf, fierce and protective and loyal to a fault.

He's terrified when they send him back; without the Army, without his unit, he's a lone wolf and John isn't good at being alone. His particular strain of _deino lupis_ is comparable to the grey wolf and his therapist worries that being without a pack may be enough to shatter what mental stability he has left.

It's a long time before they both realise that while John doesn't have the Army any more, he's far from a lone wolf.

 **I** _Harriet 'Harry' Watson_

When Sherlock finally meets Harry, three years, four months and eighteen days after he meets her brother, she laughs at his description of how he'd deduced all John's secrets during their first meeting. The laughter stops when she tells him that in fact, he had made two mistakes; Harry was Harriet and John didn't distance himself from his only remaining family because of the drink or even the collapse of Harry's marriage.

"You know he was bitten in Afghanistan, don't you?" Harry demands, cutting Sherlock off before he can point out that he just told her he deduced that the first time they met. "'Course you do. Well, he didn't come back to London at first. Not the city, anyway. He stayed with me."

Harry swigs her club soda like it's something stronger. (It isn't; John's heightened senses are repulsed by the smell of drink and Harry is too invested in rebuilding their relationship to jeopardise her efforts through such an elemental mistake.)

Then she puts the glass down and, eyes on the bottles behind the bar instead of Sherlock, tells him about the guy she'd brought back from the pub one night. She explains how big he was, how drunk she'd been, when the second thoughts started and how the guy wouldn't take 'no' for an answer when she tried to make him stop.

"John saved you," Sherlock makes it a flat statement.

"Yeah, ripped up his clothes and the guy pissed himself and ran. He told me, later on, that he didn't dare bite back then because he might have been contagious," Harry stares into her drink. "I...freaked. I was off my face and I..."

"Made him feel like a monster," Sherlock finishes, mind racing to slot this new information into his picture of John. He can't imagine how Harry could have been so _stupid_ and he tells her so.

Harry doesn't throw her drink at him, but she tells him later that it was a near thing.

 **II** _D.I. G. Lestrade_

Greg Lestrade doesn't find out John is a wolf until after the case that he still thinks of as A Study in Pink, when he calls around to see if John wants to go for a drink. Sherlock is being the temperamental bastard that he always is when there isn't a riveting case and he thinks that John could probably use a little time with normal people.

John looks up at him with longing when he shows up, offering to buy a drink even, then he looks down at the ground as he tells Lestrade that he's a therianthrope in a tone of voice that reminds Lestrade of a kicked dog. Lestrade isn't stupid; knows John is giving him a chance to back up but John seems a decent bloke and Lestrade puts up with Sherlock for god's sake!

He's a little wary but it's a good night, John turns out to be good company, with a wicked sense of humour and an excellent listener who always gets his round in without needing to be reminded. It makes a nice change from the tight-fisted bastards Lestrade works with. So he makes a point of taking John out for a drink at least once a week. After one semi-soused conversation that first night, the wolf thing doesn't come up again until the Seventh Napoleon case, when the suspect turns out to be armed and very bloody dangerous and proves it by shooting the constable who is accompanying him.

There's a hectic dash through abandoned buildings and then Lestrade is caught down an alley with a madman.

He will remember later being absolutely certain he was a dead man. The bastard has a gun which is not how Lestrade wanted confirmation that the suspect was part of an organised crime ring. There's nowhere to hide and he hasn't a fucking clue where he is, even if he still had his phone to call for backup. He has his hands up to shield his head. There are footsteps, the click of the gun.

He doesn't even see the wolf, just a blur of fur and a snarl then the suspect is down and screaming for help. A huge silver/smoke-grey wolf is towering over the guy, long white fangs gleaming in the gloom of the alley. It's circling the suspect and Lestrade stares dumbly at it for nearly a minute before he sees the paler patch of fur on the back of the wolf's shoulder and he realises who he's looking at. As soon as he stands up, the wolf backs off and disappears down the alley, vanishing into the night and leaving him to handcuff his suddenly pliant suspect and haul the snivelling scumbag back for processing.

That weekend, Lestrade takes John to Stamford Bridge for the Chelsea/Arsenal match and buys him dinner at the good pub down the bottom of the road.

  
 **III** _Molly Hooper_

Molly is working the morning shift when Sherlock finishes his latest experiment and all but keels over from exhaustion. John rounds him up with a conspiratorial eye-roll and Molly expects that that's all she's seen of them for the day. Instead John reappears only a few minutes later with a shrug and a rueful smile. "Put him in a taxi and warned Mrs. Hudson to expect him."

He doesn't explain why and Molly can't quite think how to ask. Instead she talks about her latest research as John shadows her around the lab. She knows John is a lycanthrope, is proud of herself for knowing the right term for the wolf-strain but she's almost never seen him without Sherlock. Sherlock is so brilliant he eclipses everyone around him and Molly feels bad because John is lovely really. She's still jealous but, well, he's still such a nice man.

He helps her with filing, telling horror stories about his days – before computers and all the modern conveniences – and Molly laughs and can't imagine how anyone could be afraid of him. There are four new bodies to catalogue and John helps her with the paperwork. He seems somehow distracted and Molly find out why when body bag #3 turns out to contain a vampire rather than a n old age pensioner who left his body to science.

The vampire is horrible; a proper monstrous ghoul of decaying flesh. It must be starving, the smell of rot is rancid and thick and-and John rips its throat out before Molly can do more than fall over backwards. She's not good with bodies that aren't properly dead and she gets clumsy when she's nervous. The vampire explodes into dust and it's over before Molly can really process what's happened.

John stays crouched beside her, letting her press her face into his soft, warm fur until she's stopped shaking. He's a wall of muscle and soft smokey-grey fur and his tongue isn't as rough as her cat's tongue is when he licks away the tears. He stays like that until Molly's gotten herself back together enough for him to change and make her a cup of tea.

He even helps her clean up after the police have been.

 **IV** _Sergeant Sally Donovan_

Even after he's been to a dozen crime-scenes with Sherlock, Sally doesn't call John Watson a freak. Sherlock's eccentricities are fair game and the taunts are more a game these days than actual malice but John is different.

Sally's cousin was in Afghanistan and his mum cried for days after the family was notified that their son had been bitten. Her aunt OD'd three weeks later; took a whole bottle of sleeping pills when Cyril shot himself with a silver bullet and his own service revolver, leaving a note saying that he couldn't go back to his family as a monster. They were buried on the same day and Sally remembers how the rain had threatened all day but only actually started when her uncle couldn't throw the handful of mud and collapsed on his knees. She's seen what bigotry can do and she wants no part of it.

So Sally keeps an eye on John, makes sure to deflect some of the stupider coppers who think they're big men, capable of taking on a wolf and she always has a bottle of peppermint oil handy when Sherlock drags him headlong into a particularly gory crime scene. It's simple courtesy, she thinks, that's all.

When she breaks up with Anderson, it's a cold October night and they're both angry. He says some things that he won't mean in the morning but Sally is already teetering on the brink and she can't face him like this. So she runs, just puts her head down and runs until she's lost in the chilly fog and the dark.

John finds her before any muggers or rapists can; a huge grey shape fading out of the mist to pad alongside her, shoulder to hip. He radiates warmth and Sally tangles her fingers in the big ruff of hair along his shoulders and they walk through London together until Sally can't walk any more and John nudges her up some stairs and into a bedroom with a hot water bottle and soft sheets.

When she wakes up the next morning, her clothes are folded on the chair beside the bed, still warm from the tumble-dryer. John has coffee and muffins waiting after her shower and Sally doesn't even mind how Sherlock bitches about John having her in his bed.

 **V** _Mycroft Holmes_

Mycroft is horribly put-out when a terrorist cell kidnaps him. They aren't even intelligent enough to have deduced his true role in government; they actually targeted him because they believed he was a minor and potentially expendable functionary. It is frankly maddening to discover that they do not in fact have any concrete plan and are at a loss for how to proceed.

Regrettably, Mycroft's absence leaves his entire network at a loss. They will organize a rescue eventually of course, but Mycroft is not optimistic about his chances of survival. Amateurs are notoriously bad at preserving hostages and a mistake is not merely likely, it is practically inevitable. He allows himself a maudlin moment to wonder if Sherlock will bother to track down his killers. Mummy will doubtless insist and he supposes he should be happy with that.

Then commotion breaks out; a lot of shouting, gunfire in a random and spasmodic manner suggestive of surprise and terror and a low growl that makes Mycroft's hind-brain scrabble for escape. He isn't a fool. His obligations to the Government mean that he is far more informed about the variations in the therianthropy virus than even the Prime Minster. It means that he has no comforting delusions about what is happening.

He is somewhat astounded that any of his subordinates possessed the necessary wit to order the deployment of a special forces unit. Then he realises that there is only one growl, varying somewhat in pitch which means that Mycroft's situation is no longer precarious. Now it is likely fatal.

The bloodied wolf who shreds the door to find him is unfamiliar but the deduction is a simple one and Mycroft tenses. He was telling the truth when he said he valued John's devotion to Sherlock and the lycanthropy that sustains that loyalty but he is far from confident that John regards him as anything but a nuisance.

He takes a moment to admire the lean lines of the wolf and to savour the oddity that John is so much larger as a wolf than he could ever aspire to be as a man. John prowls over, still growling a little and Mycroft closes his eyes.

The snap of sharp teeth makes him jump but there is no pain. Mycroft opens one eye and looks down to where his bonds have been neatly bitten through then up at the wolf who is regarding him with bright eyes and a wagging tail.

 **I** _Sherlock_

John Watson is a good man who came back from war believing himself to be a monster. Sherlock knew that the second they met. He also recognised immediately that John was mistaken. If Sherlock was a good man, he would have convinced John of that evident fact.

Sherlock Holmes is not a good man. He wears down John's defences, pays for the tests that prove John is non-contagious and flirts (clumsily) relentlessly with him. He kisses John that first night, with the taste of the cabbie's blood still on John's tongue and crowds into every inch of his personal space.

Their flat fills with experiments and Sherlock researches the relatively rare Lycanthropy strain and the habits of the deino lupis obsessively. He observes John with even greater care. He learns everything that it is possible to learn and then, he gets John drunk, tumbles him into his bed and fucks him. He loves the way John's eyes shine gold, the growling writhing beast John becomes as Sherlock undoes him. He learns how John likes to be touched and what he needs to keep himself rooted in the here and now. He learns that John favours the submissive role in this; a reaction to the iron control he exerts in every day life.

After, lying tangled and sweaty, John whispers against Sherlock's chest and Sherlock is too exhausted to correct him when John says "Thank you."

Sherlock hears the unspoken half of the sentence and he snorts. John does not need to be saved. John is a good man. Sherlock is not. John is something other than human. Sherlock is not. On average, perhaps, it all balances out.


	2. Shapes in the Mist

John spent eight months being 'acclimatised' to his new life before they let him back into civilian life. Four months therapy under armed guard were needed just to get back into the country he'd been born in and sworn an oath to protect.

That was with Sgt. Thurston who helped by studying the biological changes that were already starting to happen and who John was grateful to, even if he had to bury the urge to snap and savage until the interloper left him be. Thurston was transparently fascinated by what had happened and how John was changing and he kept asking question after question until John had to bite back the urge to slam him to the floor until he conceded John's dominant position.

It means John doesn't get to deny any of the changes or pretend that they aren't exactly what they are. His sense of smell sharpened almost instantly but it's been steadily increasing in acuity until the first full moon when John jumps a twelve foot fence like it isn't there. There are other Wolves out there and a lot of terrified young men who don't know how to protect themselves ( _pack_ ) and John takes a bullet through his shoulder that should have killed him.

He marks the tent enclosure as territory (too small, too barren but **his** ) and pretends not to hear the jokes about not needing a latrine. It's a common misconception; John isn't an animal, not totally and there are scent glands in his fingers now so everything he touches is Marked. (And if he occasionally has a piss in a corner, it's just because the latrine is filthy.)

They kick him out, send him 'home' and John winds up in London for want of anywhere else to go. He hates being back in London, hates the tearing, terrified feeling of _no-pack_ so badly that he tries to live with Harry for a few weeks until she comes home drunk and with a man. John nearly doesn't smell her distress in time through the reek of gin and vodka and he leaves before she can throw him out.

He stays in a small barren room that fills with his scent and nothing else and pines. He can't hope to maintain a territory alone and there are other shifters out there. He trails after Stamford not because he believes Mike can actually find a Wolf-tolerant flatmate but because Mike played rugby with him in Bart's and he's the closest thing to pack John has.

And Mike brings him to Sherlock and Sherlock reads John's distress like everything else about him. Sherlock is wonderful, crazy and he doesn't have a pack either but that's okay. That's good; they'll build one together and it's going to be brilliant.

Sherlock teaches him slowly how his work is like a hunt and John throws himself happily into the chase. Physically, no matter what it looks like, John is a match for anyone or anything that threatens them and Sherlock starts to rely on his razor-sharp sense to find the things Sherlock knows have to be there.

The first murder scene is hard. There is a lot of blood and Anderson is watching John with narrowed eyes, like he's expecting John to try and eat the body or something straight out of a Hollywood slasher. John doesn't bother to correct him; he's still as much human as he is wolf and human blood doesn't smell like the occasionally fox or rabbit snapped up under a full moon. It smells of danger and John's instincts scream at every sudden move.

It's Sally who chases off Anderson and his CSI cronies and gives him a small bottle of peppermint oil to drown out the smell. John goes running that night, racing through alleys and sending dealers and pimps and tramps scurrying for cover.

Sherlock is playing the violin – actually playing for a change – when he pads up the stairs, limping with both left legs and he's cleared his books and experiments off the rug so John can sprawl out and pant. He pauses after a soft concerto that John thinks is Beethoven and one long, clever hand reaches down to ruffle the fur along the back of his neck. Then he starts playing like John isn't there and John rolls all the way over, baring his belly and rubbing into the rug.

Sherlock smiles.


End file.
